Qt is great but it's a stretch to say it looks and feels completely native. Open Qt Creator on Windows and tell me it looks or feels anything like a native Windows application.
Qt looks pretty close if you stick to just the essential controls/widgets (text, buttons, text fields). Once you start using other stuff you can definitely tell it isn't a native application. That's not to say Qt isn't good. It's a great toolkit and far, far more complete and featureful than wxWidgets but that's comes as a trade off. The native-backed nature of wxWidgets means you are kind of working with the lowest common denominator a lot of the time which means you don't often get more sophisticated control/widget options. You also have to deal with more bugs between the platforms whereas you rarely have to with Qt.
You have to decide if you want a big, powerful toolkit with commercial backing (and a pretty hefty licensing fee for commercial users) that doesn't quite feel native or a natively-backed toolkit that is less featureful, more buggy, and free.
> looks or feels anything like a native Windows application
But compared to what? A ribbon app like MSWord? Photoshop? VS2015? VS200X? They're all radically different and they're all creation-centered apps, so if you tell me Qt Creator doesn't feel native... it feels more native than any of those I cited, all massive commercial successes?
It's like you said... it looks native when you stick to forms and buttons. And honestly, yeah that's fine, because any app that doesn't stick to forms and buttons will want to customize itself far more.
Qt looks pretty close if you stick to just the essential controls/widgets (text, buttons, text fields). Once you start using other stuff you can definitely tell it isn't a native application. That's not to say Qt isn't good. It's a great toolkit and far, far more complete and featureful than wxWidgets but that's comes as a trade off. The native-backed nature of wxWidgets means you are kind of working with the lowest common denominator a lot of the time which means you don't often get more sophisticated control/widget options. You also have to deal with more bugs between the platforms whereas you rarely have to with Qt.
You have to decide if you want a big, powerful toolkit with commercial backing (and a pretty hefty licensing fee for commercial users) that doesn't quite feel native or a natively-backed toolkit that is less featureful, more buggy, and free.